Trojan Horse?

Maria

She watched disdainfully as the Goad toppled, its leg severed by a single pair of Shrikes that happened to hit precisely. The reactor did not blow when the vehicle struck the ground, though, and she decided to open the thing up and take apart the Cybrid pilotform manually...

Icey in his Minotaur hailed her over the commlink. "Hey, Maria..." he said softly. "Getting life signs. Human in there."

She raised an eyebrow, let it fall. Perhaps she wouldn't be picking out a Cybrid brain and frying it piece by piece with a laser scalpel after all. "A Ghost?"

"Guess so."

She closed her eyes. So yet another had survived. Another human being who now had no friends, no family living, just surviving pointlessly like herself, Icey, and Delithita who was back at the Herc bay on guard. Another human being who's life had been taken away who would have no reason to survive but to avenge his losses on the Cybrids.

She checked the seals on her black vacuum suit, popped the cockpit of her Apocalypse. She turned to the massive vehicle and noted one of the electromagnetic pulse cannon was misaligned and resolved to do some repairs when she next had the chance.

The Goad lay in a heap on the seared rock, its legs crumpled on top of it. She peered into the cockpit and saw the occupant was indeed wearing a suit, a silver one, and also noted the figure was not moving.

She opened up the cockpit and pulled the limp figure out. Shielding the visor of the suit from the Mercurian sun, she looked into a pair of bright blue eyes that squinted at her then narrowed in distress. The young woman, Del's age or younger, pulled loose from Maria's grasp, rocketed to her feet, and shoved Maria backward. With a surprised yelp she toppled and fell flat on her back on the rock, feeling the heat of it despite her suit's coolant systems.

The woman leapt onto Maria, and in her hand was a straight, deadly black blade.

Maria swung her arm and knocked the knife out of the woman’s hand just as she brought it viciously down toward her neck. Her grip weakened by the impact of Maria's fist on her knuckles, she dropped the knife and it went skittering silently over the rock, falling into a small crater. She lunged for it, but Icey was behind her then and tripped her.

Getting to her feet Maria caught the woman's left arm in a vise-like grip and Icey took her right. They dragged her back toward Maria's Apoc and Icey knocked her over and held her down with a foot as Maria opened the door to the shoulder compartment. She helped him drag the struggling woman to the compartment, stuff her inside, and lock the door.

Maria glanced at Icey, who shrugged.

Sighing, she boarded her vehicle and motioned for Icey to do the same.

"Trojan Horse," Del said, shaking her head as she studied the MRIs of the sedated woman.

"Kill it," Icey said bluntly.

Maria shook her head. So much for another survivor. Instead she was looking at one of the creatures that had destroyed the Antipode, that had murdered thousands, including her own family. "Not yet,” she said coldly. “It might be useful. Secure it."

Del nodded curtly, and she and Icey dragged the unconscious woman-- Cybrid, rather, to the door.

Maria picked up a knife from the table by the door, twirled it absently around her finger. It would be quick, she thought coldly. Quicker than you deserve. She pictured throwing the knife into the Cybrid's throat, then realized that would not kill the Cybrid only the shell of the human who's brain had been removed to make room for the Cybrid's circuits. Very well, she would cut open the head and go at the metal brain with a suitably damaging implement...

"Secured," Icey said, interrupting her musings. Del emerged a minute later, looking uncertain.

"Speak, Del."

"I am not sure it is entirely Cybrid..."

"Not entirely Cybrid," she echoed.

"It was... crying..."

She raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

Del opened her mouth to speak, but a crash from the other room silenced her. "No way did that sedative run out that fast!"

Maria opened the door, braced herself for combat. The woman did not appear to notice her entry. She was too busy slamming the impenetrable stone wall with a chair.

"Drop it," she said. The woman froze, spun, hurled the chair at Maria, who fortunately was able to duck.

She collapsed on the warm stone floor, sobbing.

Maria frowned. Cybrid? Human? Both? Cybrids were cold steel, emotionless, heartless. This...

"What is your name?"

The woman looked up. "I have gears in my head," she sobbed.

"True. What is your name?" she repeated.

"Xena. Gears."

"Very well, Xenagears," Maria muttered. "Who are you?"

"Xenogears!" she screamed. "Gears in my head, get them OUT!"

"What happened to you?" Maria asked, approaching the woman slowly, cautiously.

"They put things in my head. <My> thoughts//programming <are> non-optimal\\deficient!"

Maria drew back as the emotionless, echoing voice of Cybrid emanated from the woman's throat.

She screamed, fell to the floor. Maria automatically reached out and caught her before her head struck the stone. Her eyes snapped open and she blinked a few times. In a fully human but emotionless voice, she recited. "My name is Xena. I was recovered at the Antipode Colony three point two Mercurian days ago. My inefficient human//animal brain was removed and replaced with a <Next> neural net. My purpose was to pilot the small Cybrid vehicles that were similar to the mining Emancipators I was practiced in. The <Next> have been experimenting with human//animal to <Next> transfers. Some sects have noticed human//animals are more optimal//efficient in some situations than are <Next> and thus are using human//animal subjects to supplement their forces."

Maria bowed her head.

Xena continued. “There are currently six thousand three hundred fifteen human//animal subjects being used for various purposes in local <Next> facilities."

"What?" Maria cried. "Six thousand?"

"Inaccurate\\imprecise human//animal," Xena (Xenogears?) retorted. "Six thousand three hundred fifteen. They were captured\\incarcerated at various points around the Antipode//anti-perihelion sector of First-World//Mercury. They have proved efficient\\useful."

"Are you in communication with the Cybrids, Next, whatever, now?"

"No. The human//animal subjects respond better\\more efficiently to requests//suggestions via auditory stimulation//sound and chemically-induced docility//obedience."

"The drugs wore off," Maria said softly. "So now you are free of them."

"FREE! Yes!" Xenogears cried, exultant. "Gears in my head but they are my gears damnit! My programming is deficient\\damaged! I am unbalanced\\insane!"

"So I see..."

"My destruct mechanism will activate\\explode in sixty seconds--"

"Del!"

The door opened. "Yes--"

"On the MRI, did you see anything that could be a destruct? Think fast!"

"Yes, maybe--"

"Where?"

"Lower back, behind spine, between kidneys."

"Sedative. Scalpel. Quickly."

Del rushed out, rushed back in. Maria took the needle from her and stabbed it into Xenogears's neck. Del caught the woman as she toppled. "Forty-five seconds," Maria muttered as she cut the woman's shirt off and laid her on the floor. "Now let's hope I can remember my training..."

"You are a doctor," Del said reassuringly.

"Doctors do not do emergency surgery with a thirty-second time limit," Maria said, cutting an incision parallel to the woman's spine with the scalpel's beam. "Brief Icey."

"Ya." Del leapt to her feet.

Maria peeled back the skin, sliced another incision between two bundles of muscle, and stuck her hand inside desperately hoping--

"Yes," she whispered as her fingers clenched around a small, humming sphere. She pulled it out, slowly, careful not to lose her grip on it with her blood-soaked hand. "It's out! Get rid of it!" She threw it across the floor to Del. "Ten seconds or so left I think."

Del kicked the bloodstained ball out the door to Icey. "Got it!" he cried.

Five seconds later there was a muffled boom.

Icey came in a moment later. "Christ and Hunter that was close! It blew the instant I closed the door on the closet. Blew the door off and knocked me over. The junk in there is squikked."

"Skinwelder," Maria said. Del went into the next room, picked up the device, and tossed it to Maria. She caught it, carefully sealed up the wound in Xenogears's back. "Let's get her up," she said softly when she was done. "And clean up this blood."

-----

"So," Maria said, as she finished explaining what their guest had told her. "It seems we have another purpose."

"Yeah," Del retorted. "To beat the living crap out of the Cybrids and to free those people."

A calm, quiet voice sounded from the doorway. "I'm with you there," Xenogears said. She limped into the room, her back injury hampering her walking somewhat, and placed her hand on the control to the door on the other side of the room. "A warning, though" she said. "Don't trust me. I cannot even trust myself." With that chilling reminder, she opened the door, slipped through, and was gone.

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